Significant Internet Disruption Affects Numerous Sites and Apps

A large-scale internet disruption has affected dozens websites and mobile apps around the world, with users reporting problems connecting to the web following issues at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The affected apps encompass the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to multiple Amazon-operated operations like its primary shopping site and the Ring doorbell device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was impacted as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with also reports of problems accessing the HMRC website on the start of the week. Additionally in Britain, several Ring customers turned to social media to report their home gadgets were not working.

In the UK alone, reports of disruptions on particular applications totaled the thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the issue started in the Atlantic coast of the US at the cloud division, a unit that offers vital internet infrastructure for a host of businesses, who lease space on Amazon servers. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global online services system.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the United States (morning UK time), the company announced “elevated error rates and latencies” for AWS services in a region on the eastern US of the America. The ripple effect seemed to hit platforms around the world, with the outage tracking website indicating issues with the same sites in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks web disruptions, further indicated a surge in outages on the start of the week, including several cases located in the Virginia area, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where officials confirmed the outage originated.